Employees of the Sayano-Shushensky Biosphere Reserve are getting ready for the winter count, one of the main methods of assessing the animal populations. It will begin in February, but today employees have been selected to carry out the count on the permanent and additional routes, a training seminar has been held and instructions have been issued to the staff involved.

This year, the count will take place along 15 routes covering 162 km in total. After the field work, all the results will be processed and compared with those of the previous five years, which will reveal any changes in the numbers of separate animal species at the reserve.

When going along their assigned route, specialists take note of the tracks left by squirrels, wolves, hares, boars, roe deer, elks, Pallas's cats, wolverines, lynxes, musk deer, snow leopards, sables, stoats, weasels, otters and other animals.

This year, to facilitate the identification of animal tracks, the research department designed a special checklist with pictures and descriptions of them.